Bitcoin at $5,300; Russia to Issue Own Cryptocurrency

Thanks to an increased buying interest over the past few days, the price of Bitcoin has moved long above the $5,000 threshold and set yet another record. The big uptick is seen as a direct consequence of the popularity the cryptocurrency has seen over the previous weeks, although the trend seems to be up for a challenge as market signals show a bearish wave is in the making.

In other interesting news, Jameson Lopp, Bitcoin engineer and vocal opponent of the SegWit2x hard fork has had his home raided by a SWAT team in what was probably either a very bad case of trolling or an intimidation attempt. Lopp, who voices his criticism of the hard fork on Twitter, has revealed in a TechCrunch update that somebody falsely reported him to the police that he was holding his own family hostage.

The SWAT team reportedly shut down his entire neighborhood and raided Lopp’s home only to find out the call was false. Lopp says that he isn’t quite certain whether the caller was doing this because of his criticism but he does say this is not the first time “prominent Bitcoin folks” went through such an ordeal.

Bears Return to Market after Record Volume Uptick

During the past week since our last update, the price of Bitcoin went through some major changes. From the lowest point of $4,824.58 hit on Thursday morning, Bitcoin jumped rapidly within hours and continued to steadily hold during the weekend when it even reached $5,807.03. However, come Tuesday, the price began a downward course that took it close to $5,300.

Directly coinciding with the price push was a record volume increase that took the trading volume to $4 billion, something that hasn’t happened anytime before. Naturally, it has since subsided and is now sitting at $1.9 billion, while the market cap is at $88 billion.

Judging from our technical analysis, the price seems headed for a further correction, albeit not as strong one as during the volume peak. Out of 12 technical oscillators 6 are indicating a selling trend with 6 out of 12 moving averages likewise showing the same trend. Although the SMA 100 is safely above the SMA 200 on this time-frame, showing there’s still less resistance to the upside, the short term signals also indicate that the selling trend is intensifying. Thus, if the sell-off continues, it will likely lead to more price drops.

Russia Dumps Bitcoin; Issues Own CryptoRuble

Continuing the new course it took during the past month, the Russian government is putting Bitcoin to the side and is now focusing on its own cryptocurrency – the CryptoRuble. Namely, according to RT, Nikolaay Nikiforov, Communications Minister at the government, has informed the public that President Vladimir Putin has ordered an issuing of a new national cryptocurrency during a private meeting.

Speaking to the media, Nikiforov said that he was confident that Russia will be launching a new cryptocurrency, stating that the biggest reason for the decision was that, if Russia didn’t do it, then other neighboring countries in the Eurasian Economic Community would have done the same within a couple of months. He also said that once the new CryptoRuble is launched, mining of other cryptocurrencies will be banned and completely regulated by the government.

The government also banned Bitcoin exchanges during the past weeks, in what can only be described as a U-turn over previous promises about Bitcoin regulation. According to Nikiforov, once the CryptoRuble is issued it will also be subject to 13% taxation on the earned difference when selling the cryptocurrency.